Publisher's Synopsis
This book tells the extraordinary story of the twenty patients in the Monte Carmelo Hospital in New York, survivors of an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica, and the astonishing awakenings they underwent forty years later thanks to Oliver Sacks, who gave them the drug L-Dopa, a new medicine at the time. Oliver Sacks anecdotes attest to the bravery with which these patients faced their illness. Awakenings, considered a classic of medical literature, appeared in 1973 and won the Hawthornden Prize that very year. Since then it has inspired a television documentary, theatre productions and a successful film.
